OEM Valeo Xenon Headlight Restoration

[burgurboy]

I noticed the other night that my xenons were doing almost nothing to light the road. With 180k on the clock, my high beans (obviously) and even fog lights did a much better job of lighting the road up. I did some searching but all I came up with was cleaning the reflector housings and new bulbs. When I tore my projector housings apart I found this:



There was no reflective material left to "clean". The driver side was even worse than the passenger side pictured above.

my bulbs were in pretty rough shape too, so I ordered a new set of aftermarket D1s bulbs off of amazon.



After searching a few other forums, it seems like the only reasonable solution (having the reflectors recoated is pricey) is to "coat" them with some $9 aluminum HVAC Tape from Lowes.





I cleaned the housings with alcohol and cut/placed tape in each housing



After polishing


I covered a few of the other internal/moving parts that could also be absorbing light




I did one completely, before the other so i could do a side-by-side comparison. There is a big difference, even in the daylight, and I don't even have the new bulbs in yet. I'll report back when they're installed but even now, this is a huge improvement

[imnuts]

Have any before/after pics of the light output to post?

Sent from my DROID Turbo 2

[Luxus Panzer]

Waiting on comparison pics.


How did you "polish" furnace tape ?

[alien_brain]

polishing paste? made for polishing metal. i presume

[burgurboy]

polishing paste? made for polishing metal. i presume

Yes. Met-all Aluminum paste/polish. A little elbow grease to apply, then just buff it off with a clean rag.

I with I would have done comparison pics but, I've been in a hurry to get this done before I start a new job so, I have no before pics. I can say though, that my low beams were almost useless. If there were no street lights, I couldn't see potholes coming. If there were no streetlights I had to rely on fog lights / halogen high beams.

The only real comparison I have: I finished one light, Installed it. In the middle of the day (in the shade) the refinished light was able to light up my jeans pretty well when standing in front of the car. The unfinished light OTOH could not project any light onto my jeans. None at all. It was a really big difference.

[walky_talky20]

Thanks so much for the write-up. I think I need to do this.